Hard work, creativity, vision: the essentials of outstanding home care

Four out of five home care agencies are rated good, but only 3% are deemed outstanding. What are inspectors looking for?“Absolutely soul-destroying” is how Cath Loates and Sandra Harris remember the day their home care business was rated inadequate. “I…

Four out of five home care agencies are rated good, but only 3% are deemed outstanding. What are inspectors looking for?

“Absolutely soul-destroying” is how Cath Loates and Sandra Harris remember the day their home care business was rated inadequate. “It knocked the wind out of my sails, out of all of us,” says Loates, the company director.

After working to establish Eboney Home Care in Consett, County Durham, over seven years, Loates and Harris decided to step back from the day-to-day running and hand over the reins to other staff in 2012. “But actually, we should never have taken our eye off the ball,” says Loates.

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‘Back in 2019, Britain was much larger’: what the history books will say | Jack Bernhardt

Using the latest technology, I’ve got my hands on a textbook from the year 2070. And it isn’t very complimentaryIt’s always odd when politicians make an appeal to “the history books” – it’s like an actor making an appeal to reviewers midway through the…

Using the latest technology, I’ve got my hands on a textbook from the year 2070. And it isn’t very complimentary

It’s always odd when politicians make an appeal to “the history books” – it’s like an actor making an appeal to reviewers midway through the film. But it took on a new surreal meaning on Monday, when Theresa May asked us to consider what the history books would say about the vote on her deal.

It takes truly great commitment to your own mediocrity to sort through a catalogue of your own mistakes, find the largest and most avoidable, and then tell the gods of history that yep, this national humiliation is the way you want future generations to remember you. It’s like calling up the Oxford English Dictionary and requesting that “to cock something up irrevocably, to the point that people feel a pang of despair when they hear your name” be for ever known as “doing a Theresa”.

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